Marni Soupcoff: Adam Carolla and the Republicans’ losing battle

When he called Occupy Wall Street protestors “a bunch of f—-ing self-entitled monsters” late last fall, comedian Adam Carolla got the American right’s attention.

The podcast host — who was previously best known for co-hosting Loveline with Dr. Drew Pinsky and co-hosting The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel — has been spouting similarly intemperate messages about whiny liberals (and lazy welfare bums and pushy government) for years. But for some reason, conservatives never really caught on. Perhaps because Carolla is also perpetually profane. Perhaps because a staple of The Man Show was Adam and Jimmy drinking from over-sized beer steins, and scantily clad women jumping on trampolines. Perhaps because Carolla spent a good portion of his Loveline years on a tirade against religious fanatics — and in favour of abortion.

Whatever the reason, the right is making up for lost time. Since the conservative Media Research Center highlighted his Wall Street rant on YouTube two months ago, Carolla has appeared on Glen Beck’s show (Beck called Carolla “my hero”) and become a darling of Republican bloggers.

Politically, Carolla is probably best described as a libertarian, and he has categorized himself this way (in between frequent protestations that he’s not political). But this is not a perfect label since the talk show host has also expressed a semi-joking desire to have the government sterilize dumb people, and a more serious desire to have the government limit immigration and make use of racial profiling in policing. Clearly, he has his uses for the state.

I daresay it’s this mix of politically oblivious honesty and no desire to toe a party line that has made Carolla particularly attractive to Republicans right now. After spending months obsessively focusing on the stodgy likes of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, they find a guy like Carolla — who’s sharp, funny, unrehearsed and hip to pop culture — a sight for bored eyes. And it doesn’t hurt that Carolla is a walking pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-boostraps success story, having grown up with a single mother on welfare and food stamps. He held jobs in construction and as a boxing trainer before eventually making it as an entertainer.

But before libertarian-minded conservatives get too excited, remember that we’ve been down this road before.

In the early years of the last decade, there were a great many blogs and articles (not to mention at least one book) written on the subject of “South Park Republicans.” As Andrew Sullivan, the blogger who coined the term in 2001, put it, these were people who “believe[d] we need a hard-ass foreign policy and [were] extremely skeptical of political correctness,” but who also happened to be laissez faire about social issues such as abortion, recreational drugs and pre-marital sex.

They were, in other words, a lot like the funny, foul-mouthed animated series South Park — which made its name by taking on sacred liberal cows such as the rain forest with as much disdain as it showed for sacred conservative cows such as organized religion.

In theory, South Park Republicans were evidence that U.S. conservatives had finally gained a toe-hold in the media and pop culture. Editor of the conservative City Journal Brian C. Anderson, who penned a book called South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, wrote in 2003 that the advent of Fox News, South Park and edgy right-of-centre comics such as Dennis Miller (among other things) had “injected conservative ideas into the heart of the debate.” “We’re not losing the culture wars anymore” was the restrained but optimistic headline of his piece. The implication being that, with some luck and effort, conservatives might soon be winning them.

But almost 10 years on, the American right is no further ahead. Finding in Adam Carolla a forthright and entertaining critic of liberalism who has a knack for explaining why it’s the “little guy” who’s most hurt by condescending redistributionist government meddling, Republicans rejoice.

But then they continue to gravitate to stiffs such as Mitt Romney and class-baiters such as Newt Gingrich to lead them into a national election.

One of the more interesting moments in Carolla’s recent podcasts came when Adam related the questions he’d been receiving after being publicly supported by Glenn Beck:

“I’ve been asked, am I worried about being connected with right-wing whoever or being too right wing a thousand times. No media member’s ever asked me about being too left wing when I talk about pot, abortion and gay marriage, or something like that.” And it’s not likely that they ever will.

The best way to characterize the many young American conservatives today who have no time for government dependency but lean libertarian on social policy may be “Adam Carolla Republicans.” But if history is any guide, don’t expect them to create a revolution in the media let alone in their own party.